1794 : The first 'line of sight' telegraph (semaphore) put into operation by Claude Chappe in Revolutionary
France as voluntary soldiers were defending France against Austria and other Feudal Powers. The line consisted of 22
stations and linked Lille with the capital Paris, a distance over 240 kilometres. It only took 2 to 6 minutes to transfer a
message, riding couriers would have needed 30 hours.

1801 : The first Jacquard loom, a mechanical weaver which can be programmed to weave varying patterns, depending on
the perforations in wooden cards, is developed in France.

1809 : Sommering in Munich develops the 'chemical telegraph', where every letter is represented by a wire which
terminates in a jar of water. As current flows through the letter-wire, bubbles are produced in the jar, allowing distance
communication of strings of letters.

1812 : Loyalist troops from Upper Canada start a running war with the US Army. They begin by burning down the
White House, which is quickly rebuilt. So the Canadians go back later the came year and torch it again.

1832 : Andre-Marie Ampere experiments with instantaneoustransmission of electricity through wire. Soon Ampere
in France, Schilling in Russia, Stenheil in Germany and Cooke in the UK are all racing to develop the first viable electric
telegraph. Samuel Finley Breese Morse is at this time a painting instructor at NYU, who hopes his transmitter idea will get
him enough money to do landscape art full time.

1837 : Morse constructs his own prototype, single-wire telegraph, along with his 'binary' dot-dash code
system. At the same time, W.F. Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in London file a patent for an electrical signalling device which
will connect railway stations. Elsewhere, the daguerreotype image process is first unveiled.

1838 : The new art of photography captures the public imagination. Morse demonstrates his telegraphy in public for
the first time.

1840 : The Opium War erupts between China and Britain. The Chinese government had tried to curb the opium
trade and the emperor confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium. British merchants appealed to their
government who sent 16 British Warships to Hong Kong and sailed to the mouth of the Pei Ho river. Next year they attacked the
walled city of Canton where Imperial troops were decimated by naval shelling.

1843 : Morse is given Congressional approval to experiment, though the House briefly debates tacking on an amendment
stating that half the money be spent 'trying mesmeric experiments' as the public were widely told by the press at the time
that magnetism, hypnotism and spirit projection were all the same thing.

1844 : Morse completes the Washington-Baltimore line, providing the first electrical coded message machine. He
immediately begins underwater transmission experiments in the NY harbour. The first underwater cable is laid across the
English Channel to France. Telegraph has been adapted in Britain to directing railroad traffic.

1848 : Chicago CommoditiesExchange established immediately after the wiring to the city is complete, since the
telegraph now allows speculation across vast areas and price information to freely circulate. At the same time, Political
Revolution erupts in France, Italy, Austria, Hungary & Germany.

1850 : Georg and Edvard Scheutz, Swedish brothers and printers, read about and construct a simplified version of
Babbage'sDifference Engine, for which they later receive a World Fair Gold Medal. Standardized system of
grading for commodities on international markets is now in place. John Watkins Brett (a retired antiques dealer) and
his younger brother found the General Oceanic and Subterranean Electrical Printing Telegraph Company, who contract with the
Gutta Percha Co. to produce a 25 mile cable that will connect Dover, England to Cape Gris-Nez in France. This takes over a
year of trying, but they eventually succeed.

1853 : The Crimean War is officially declared. The Gutta Percha Co. now enjoys a near-complete monopoly over
undersea cablemanufacturing. Cyrus West Field, a retired New England printer, hears about an attempt to wire
Newfoundland to speed contact between NY and London. Field bails out the bankrupted attempt and forms the New York,
Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company.

1855 : First attempt is made by Cyrus Field to wire the Atlantic, from Valentia Bay, Ireland, to Heart's Content,
Newfoundland, with 4000 km of 5/8in. thick telegraph cable. The British Navy lay a cable across the Black Sea to speed
communication during their war with Russia.

1857 : India-Suez telegraph line directs troops in supressing an uprising in India. William Thomson
(later Lord Kelvin) joins the Atlantic project as it makes its first attempts with the US frigate Niagra and the British
Agamemnon, each ship carrying 1250 miles of cable in its hull. The wire snaps and is lost.

1858 : The Trans-Atlantic cable is put in place successfully, from Valentia Bay, Ireland to Heart's Content, Nfld.
However, the wire only stays 'live' for two months, just long enough for Queen Victoria to wire President Buchannan and the
first news to be sent across the Atlantic : "...settlement of Chinese Question. Chinese empire open to trade; Christians and
foreign diplomatic agents allowed, indemnity to England and France...Gwalior insurgent army broken up, all India becoming
tranquil...". In Sept, the line dies again.

1864 : The Gutta Percha company, producer of cable cores and lining, merges with Glass, Elliott and Co., maker of
the cable armor, and together form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, which has since lay the vast majority of
the planet's submarinecommunicationscable.

1865 : A new cable, 2600 miles long, weighing 7000 tonnes, is loaded onto the 32,000 ton Great Eastern, the
largest sailing ship in the world at the time along with 8000 tons of coal, 500 crew, cows, sheep, cowl and oxen. And begins
yet another failed attempt to wire the Atlantic ocean.

1866 : Wiring of the Atlantic succeeds after 11 years when the Great Eastern crosses the Ocean with the Wire
intact..